DEMOCRACY  «**  LOWELL 


RSITY    OF  CATIWIRMT* 


DEMOCRACY 


DEMOCRACY 

An  Addrefs 

Delivered  in  the  Town  Hall 

Birmingham 

By  the  Hon.  James  Rufsell  Lowell 

American  Minister  in 

London 


The  Riverside  Prefs 
1902 

'  '  TFURNK 
•AitA  COLLEGE  LIBftAJBT 


Copyright  1 886  and  1 890  by  James  Russell  Lowell 

Copyright  1902  by  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Company 

All  rights  reserved 


M3S  8AHTA  BAx«;aJ  RARfr 


NOTE 


rHE  address  on  Democracy 
was  given  by  Mr.  Lowell  at 
Birmingham,  England,  6  October, 
1 884,  ow  assuming  the  presidency  of 
the  Birmingham  and  Midland  Insti- 
tute. It  will  be  observed  that  this  was 
near  the  close  of  Mr.  Lowell's  term 
as  Minister  to  England;  indeed,  at  a 
time  when  all  the  signs  pointed  to  the 
election  of  Mr.  Cleveland,  an  event 
which  would  quite  certainly  mean  a 
change  of  ministers.  Four  years  of 
friendly  intercourse  with  English- 
men and  Englishwomen,  and  of  a 
somewhat  more  intimate  acquaint- 


vi  NOTE 

ance  with  the  springs  of  government 
than  falls  to  the  lot  of  the  mere  looker- 
on;  not  only  that,  but  the  advantage 
which  an  alienated  American  has  of 
viewing  his  country  from  a  new  van- 
tage-ground, for  distance  in  space  has 
some  of  the  properties  of  distance  in 
time,  and  an  American  in  Europe  has 
almost  the  point  of  view  of  an  Amer- 
ican of  the  next  century  —  all  this 
may  well  have  led  Lowell  to  reflect  on 
the  fundamentals  of  politics,  and  have 
served  to  give  point  to  his  reflections 
when  he  came  to  give  this,  address. 
Moreover,  the  place  where  he  was  to 
speak  reminded  him  of  that  great  in- 
dustrial factor  which  enters  so  power- 
fully into  modern  conceptions  of  the 
state. 


JYOTE  vii 

//  is  fair,  therefore,  to  take  the  ad- 
dress as  a  careful  and  deliberate  ex- 
pression of  his  political  faith .  Tet  it 
must  be  borne  in  mind  that  he  was 
somewhat  hampered  by  his  official  po- 
sition as  well  as  inspired  by  it.  He 
stood  for  the  great  Democratic  coun- 
try, was  its  spokesman,  but  he  was 
not  speaking  to  his  own  countrymen, 
and  might  easily  be  misconstrued  by 
foreigners,  if  he  attempted  to  weigh 
Democracy  in  balances  designed  for 
apothecaries'  stuff  and  not  for  hay 
wagons.  As  he  himself  said,  not  long 
after :  "  Four  years  ago  I  was  called 
upon  to  deliver  an  address  in  Bir- 
mingham, and  chose  for  my  theme 
'  Democracy.'  In  that  place  I  felt  it 
incumbent  on  me  to  dwell  on  the  good 


viii  NOTE 

points  and  favorable  aspects  of  de- 
mocracy as  I  had  seen  them  practi- 
cally illustrated  in  my  native  land. 
I  chose  rather  that  my  discourse  should 
suffer  through  inadequacy  than  run 
the  risk  of  seeming  to  forget  what 
Burke  calls  '  that  salutary  prejudice 
called  our  country/  and  that  obliga- 
tion which  forbids  one  to  discuss  fam- 
ily affairs  before  strangers." 

One  need  not  be  nicer  than  his  au- 
thor, and  it  is  clear  from  what  Lowell 
wrote  afterward  that  he  was  some- 
what surprised  at  the  importance  at- 
tached to  this  utterance  at  Birming- 
ham. In  truth,  it  was  the  natural 
and  in  a  measure  the  unstudied  ex- 
pression of  a  man  whose  convictions 
were  not  lightly  held,  had  been  tested 


NOTE  ix 

by  long  experience,  and  were  the  warp 
and  woof  of  his  political  loom.  Stud- 
ied the  address  was,  so  far  as  it  be- 
came him  not  to  disregard  his  official 
self  and  above  all  not  to  suffer  his 
creed  to  be  modified  by  his  surround- 
ings ;  but  bating  all  this,  the  speech 
was  the  mellow  judgment  of  a  man 
about  to  retire  from  a  post  where  he 
had  been  an  intermediary  between  the 
two  freest  nations  on  earth,  and  re- 
presented his  deliberate  thought  upon 
the  foundations  of  that  freedom. 

Lowell  did  not  read  the  address 
from  manuscript,  but  from  a  printed 
proof  furnished  him  by  some  news- 
paper which  was  to  print  the  address 
the  next  day.  On  the  margins  of  the 
proof  he  had  made  manuscript  notes 


x  NOTE 

and  corrections,  and  then  bound  the 
slips  in  a  cloth  cover.  He  gave  the 
little  book  thus  made,  to  Mr.  Wilson 
King,  of  Highfield  Road,  Edgbaston, 
Birmingham,  whose  visitor  he  was  at 
the  time  of  giving  the  address,  and 
wrote  this  inscription  in  it :  "To 
Wilson  King  I  give  the  blunderbuss, 
emptied  of  its  charge,  with  very  sin- 
cere regard.  J.  R.  Lowell,  6th  Octo- 
ber, 1884." 

H.  E.  S. 


D E MO CRACT 

HE  must  be  a  born  leader  or 
misleader  of  men,  or  must 
have  been  sent  into  the  world  un- 
furnished with  that  modulating  and 
restraining  balance-wheel  which 
we  call  a  sense  of  humor,  who,  in 
old  age,  has  as  strong  a  confidence 
in  his  opinions  and  in  the  necessity 
of  bringing  the  universe  into  con- 
formity with  them  as  he  had  in 
youth.  In  a  world  the  very  condi- 
tion of  whose  being  is  that  it  should 
be  in  perpetual  flux,  where  all 
seems  mirage,  and  the  one  abiding 


DEMOCRACY 


thing  is  the  effort  to  distinguish  real- 
ities from  appearances,  the  elderly 
man  must  be  indeed  of  a  singularly 
tough  and  valid  fibre  who  is  certain 
that  he  has  any  clarified  residuum  of 
experience,  any  assured  verdict  of 
reflection,  that  deserves  to  be  called 
an  opinion,  or  who,  even  if  he  had, 
feels  that  he  is  justified  in  holding 
mankind  by  the  button  while  he 
is  expounding  it.  And  in  a  world 
of  daily  —  nay,  almost  hourly  — 
journalism,  where  every  clever 
man,  every  man  who  thinks  him- 
self clever,  or  whom  anybody  else 
thinks  clever,  is  called  upon  to 
deliver  his  judgment  point-blank 
and  at  the  word  of  command  on 
every  conceivable  subject  of  human 


DEMOCRACY 


thought,  or,  on  what  sometimes 
seems  to  him  very  much  the  same 
thing,  on  every  inconceivable  dis- 
play of  human  want  of  thought, 
there  is  such  a  spendthrift  waste 
of  all  those  commonplaces  which 
furnish  the  permitted  staple  of 
public  discourse  that  there  is  little 
chance  of  beguiling  a  new  tune  out 
of  the  one-stringed  instrument  on 
which  we  have  been  thrumming  so 
long.  In  this  desperate  necessity 
one  is  often  tempted  to  think  that, 
if  all  the  words  of  the  dictionary 
were  tumbled  down  in  a  heap  and 
then  all  those  fortuitous  juxtaposi- 
tions and  combinations  that  made 
tolerable  sense  were  picked  out 
and  pieced  together,  we  might  find 


DEMOCRACY 


among  them  some  poignant  sug- 
gestions towards  novelty  of  thought 
or  expression.  But,  alas !  it  is  only 
the  great  poets  who  seem  to  have 
this  unsolicited  profusion  of  unex- 
pected and  incalculable  phrase, 
this  infinite  variety  of  topic.  For 
everybody  else  everything  has 
been  said  before,  and  said  over 
again  after.  He  who  has  read  his 
Aristotle  will  be  apt  to  think  that 
observation  has  on  most  points  of 
general  applicability  said  its  last 
word,  and  he  who  has  mounted  the 
tower  of  Plato  to  look  abroad  from 
it  will  never  hope  to  climb  another 
with  so  lofty  a  vantage  of  specu- 
lation. Where  it  is  so  simple  if 
not  so  easy  a  thing  to  hold  one's 


DEMOCRACY 


peace,  why  add  to  the  general 
confusion  of  tongues  ?  There  is 
something  disheartening,  too,  in 
being  expected  to  fill  up  not  less 
than  a  certain  measure  of  time,  as 
if  the  mind  were  an  hour-glass, 
that  need  only  be  shaken  and  set 
on  one  end  or  the  other,  as  the 
case  may  be,  to  run  its  allotted 
sixty  minutes  with  decorous  ex- 
actitude. I  recollect  being  once 
told  by  the  late  eminent  naturalist, 
Agassiz,  that  when  he  was  to  de- 
liver his  first  lecture  as  professor 
(at  Zurich,  I  believe)  he  had  grave 
doubts  of  his  ability  to  occupy  the 
prescribed  three  quarters  of  an 
hour.  He  was  speaking  without 
notes,  and  glancing  anxiously  from 


6  DEMOCRACY 

time  to  time  at  the  watch  that  lay 
before  him  on  the  desk.  "  When 
I  had  spoken  a  half  hour,"  he  said, 
"  I  had  told  them  everything  I 
knew  in  the  world,  everything ! 
Then  I  began  to  repeat  myself," 
he  added,  roguishly,  "  and  I  have 
done  nothing  else  ever  since."  Be- 
neath the  humorous  exaggeration 
of  the  story  I  seemed  to  see  the  face 
of  a  very  serious  and  improving 
moral.  And  yet  if  one  were  to  say 
only  what  he  had  to  say  and  then 
stopped,  his  audience  would  feel 
defrauded  of  their  honest  measure. 
Let  us  take  courage  by  the  example 
of  the  French,  whose  exportation 
of  Bordeaux  wines  increases  as  the 
area  of  their  land  in  vineyards  is 
diminished. 


DEMOCRACY 


To  me,  somewhat  hopelessly 
revolving  these  things,  the  unde- 
layable year  has  rolled  round,  and 
I  find  myself  called  upon  to  say 
something  in  this  place,  where  so 
many  wiser  men  have  spoken  be- 
fore me.  Precluded,  in  my  quality 
of  national  guest,  by  motives  of 
taste  and  discretion,  from  dealing 
with  any  question  of  immediate 
and  domestic  concern,  it  seemed 
to  me  wisest,  or  at  any  rate  most 
prudent,  to  choose  a  topic  of  com- 
paratively abstract  interest,  and  to 
ask  your  indulgence  for  a  few 
somewhat  generalized  remarks  on 
a  matter  concerning  which  I  had 
some  experimental  knowledge,  de- 
rived from  the  use  of  such  eyes  and 


DEMOCRACY 


ears  as  Nature  had  been  pleased  to 
endow  me  withal,  and  such  report 
as  I  had  been  able  to  win  from  them. 
The  subject  which  most  readily 
suggested  itself  was  the  spirit  and 
the  working  of  those  conceptions 
of  life  and  polity  which  are  lumped 
together,  whether  for  reproach  or 
commendation,  under  the  name  of 
Democracy.  By  temperament  and 
education  of  a  conservative  turn, 
I  saw  the  last  years  of  that  quaint 
Arcadia  which  French  travellers 
saw  with  delighted  amazement  a 
century  ago,  and  have  watched 
the  change  (to  me  a  sad  one)  from 
an  agricultural  to  a  proletary  pop- 
ulation. The  testimony  of  Balaam 
should  carry  some  conviction.    I 


DEMOCRACY  9 

have  grown  to  manhood  and  am 
now  growing  old  with  the  growth 
of  this  system  of  government  in 
my  native  land,  have  watched  its 
advances,  or  what  some  would  call 
its  encroachments,  gradual  and 
irresistible  as  those  of  a  glacier, 
have  been  an  ear-witness  to  the 
forebodings  of  wise  and  good  and 
timid  men,  and  have  lived  to  see 
those  forebodings  belied  by  the 
course  of  events,  which  is  apt  to 
show  itself  humorously  careless 
of  the  reputation  of  prophets.  I 
recollect  hearing  a  sagacious  old 
gentleman  say  in  1840  that  the 
doing  away  with  the  property 
qualification  for  suffrage  twenty 
years  before  had  been  the  ruin  of 


io        DEMOCRACY 

the  State  of  Massachusetts ;  that 
it  had  put  public  credit  and  pri- 
vate estate  alike  at  the  mercy  of 
demagogues.  I  lived  to  see  that 
Commonwealth  twenty  odd  years 
later  paying  the  interest  on  her 
bonds  in  gold,  though  it  cost  her 
sometimes  nearly  three  for  one 
to  keep  her  faith,  and  that  while 
suffering  an  unparalleled  drain  of 
men  and  treasure  in  helping  to 
sustain  the  unity  and  self-respect 
of  the  nation. 

If  universal  suffrage  has  worked 
ill  in  our  larger  cities,  as  it  certainly 
has,  this  has  been  mainly  because 
the  hands  that  wielded  it  were  un- 
trained to  its  use.  There  the  elec- 
tion of  a  majority  of  the  trustees  of 


DEMOCRACY        11 

the  public  money  is  controlled  by 
the  most  ignorant  and  vicious  of 
a  population  which  has  come  to  us 
from  abroad,  wholly  unpractised 
in  self-government  and  incapable 
of  assimilation  by  American  habits 
and  methods.  But  the  finances  of 
our  towns,  where  the  native  tra- 
dition is  still  dominant  and  whose 
affairs  are  discussed  and  settled  in 
a  public  assembly  of  the  people, 
have  been  in  general  honestly  and 
prudently  administered.  Even  in 
manufacturing  towns,  where  a 
majority  of  the  voters  live  by  their 
daily  wages,  it  is  not  so  often  the 
recklessness  as  the  moderation  of 
public  expenditure  that  surprises 
an  old-fashioned  observer.    "The 


12        DEMOCRACY 

beggar  is  in  the  saddle  at  last," 
cries  Proverbial  Wisdom.  "  Why, 
in  the  name  of  all  former  expe- 
rience, doesn't  he  ride  to  the 
Devil  ?  "  Because  in  the  very  act 
of  mounting  he  ceased  to  be  a 
beggar  and  became  part  owner  of 
the  piece  of  property  he  bestrides. 
The  last  thing  we  need  be  anxious 
about  is  property.  It  always  has 
friends  or  the  means  of  making 
them.  If  riches  have  wings  to  fly 
away  from  their  owner,  they  have 
wings  also  to  escape  danger. 

I  hear  America  sometimes  play- 
fully accused  of  sending  you  all 
your  storms,  and  am  in  the  habit 
of  parrying  the  charge  by  alleging 
that  we  are  enabled  to  do  this 


DEMOCRACY        13 

because,  in  virtue  of  our  protective 
system,  we  can  afford  to  make 
better  bad  weather  than  anybody 
else.  And  what  wiser  use  could 
we  make  of  it  than  to  export  it 
in  return  for  the  paupers  which  * 
some  European  countries  are  good 
enough  to  send  over  to  us  who 
have  not  attained  to  the  same  skill 
in  the  manufacture  of  them  ?  But 
bad  weather  is  not  the  worst  thing 
that  is  laid  at  our  door.  A  French 
gentleman,  not  long  ago,  forgetting 
Burke's  monition  of  how  unwise 
it  is  to  draw  an  indictment  against 
a  whole  people,  has  charged  us 
with  the  responsibility  of  whatever 
he  finds  disagreeable  in  the  morals 
or  manners  of  his  countrymen.  If 


14        DEMOCRACY 

M.  Zola  or  some  other  competent 
witness  would  only  go  into  the 
box  and  tell  us  what  those  morals 
and  manners  were  before  our 
example  corrupted  them !  But  I 
confess  that  I  find  little  to  interest 
and  less  to  edify  me  in  these  in- 
ternational bandyings  of  "  You  're 
another." 

I  shall  address  myself  to  a 
single  point  only  in  the  long  list  of 
offences  of  which  we  are  more  or 
less  gravely  accused,  because  that 
really  includes  all  the  rest.  It  is 
that  we  are  infecting  the  Old  World 
with  what  seems  to  be  thought 
the  entirely  new  disease  of  De- 
mocracy. It  is  generally  people 
who  are  in  what  are  called  easy 


DEMOCRACY        15 

circumstances  who  can  afford  the 
leisure  to  treat  themselves  to  a 
handsome  complaint,  and  these 
experience  an  immediate  allevia- 
tion when  once  they  have  found  a 
sonorous  Greek  name  to  abuse  it 
by.  There  is  something  consola- 
tory also,  something  flattering  to 
their  sense  of  personal  dignity, 
and  to  that  conceit  of  singularity 
which  is  the  natural  recoil  from 
our  uneasy  consciousness  of  being 
commonplace,  in  thinking  our- 
selves victims  of  a  malady  by 
which  no  one  had  ever  suffered 
before.  Accordingly  they  find  it 
simpler  to  class  under  one  com- 
prehensive heading  whatever  they 
find  offensive  to  their  nerves,  their 


16        DEMOCRACY 

tastes,  their  interests,  or  what  they 
suppose  to  be  their  opinions,  and 
christen  it  Democracy,  much  as 
physicians  label  every  obscure 
disease  gout,  or  as  cross-grained 
fellows  lay  their  ill-temper  to  the 
weather.  But  is  it  really  a  new 
ailment,  and,  if  it  be,  is  America 
answerable  for  it?  Even  if  she 
were,  would  it  account  for  the 
phylloxera,  and  hoof-and-mouth 
disease,  and  bad  harvests,  and  bad 
English,  and  the  German  bands, 
and  the  Boers,  and  all  the  other 
discomforts  with  which  these  later 
days  have  vexed  the  souls  of 
them  that  go  in  chariots  ?  Yet  I 
have  seen  the  evil  example  of  De- 
mocracy in  America  cited  as  the 


DEMOCRACY        17 

source  and  origin  of  things  quite 
as  heterogeneous  and  quite  as  little 
connected  with  it  by  any  sequence 
of  cause  and  effect.  Surely  this 
ferment  is  nothing  new.  It  has 
been  at  work  for  centuries,  and 
we  are  more  conscious  of  it  only 
because  in  this  age  of  publicity, 
where  the  newspapers  offer  a  ros- 
trum to  whoever  has  a  grievance, 
or  fancies  that  he  has,  the  bubbles 
and  scum  thrown  up  by  it  are 
more  noticeable  on  the  surface 
than  in  those  dumb  ages  when 
there  was  a  cover  of  silence  and 
suppression  on  the  cauldron.  Ber- 
nardo Navagero,  speaking  of  the 
Provinces  of  Lower  Austria  in 
1 546,  tells  us  that  "  in  them  there 


18       DEMOCRACY 

are  five  sorts  of  persons,  Clergy, 
Barons,  Nobles,  Burghers,  and 
Peasants.  Of  these  last  no  account 
is  made,  because  they  have  no  voice 
in  the  Diet"  1 

Nor  was  it  among  the  people 
that  subversive  or  mistaken  doc- 

1  Below  the  Peasants,  it  should  be  re- 
membered, was  still  another  even  more 
helpless  class,  the  servile  farm-laborers. 
The  same  witness  informs  us  that  of  the 
extraordinary  imposts  the  Peasants  paid 
nearly  twice  as  much  in  proportion  to 
their  estimated  property  as  the  Barons,  No- 
bles, and  Burghers  together.  Moreover, 
the  upper  classes  were  assessed  at  their 
own  valuation,  while  they  arbitrarily  fixed 
that  of  the  Peasants,  who  had  no  voice. 
(Relazioni  degli  Ambasciatori  Veneti,  Serie 
I.,  tomo  i.,  pp.  378,  379,  389.) 


DEMOCRACY        19 

trines  had  their  rise.  A  Father 
of  the  Church  said  that  property 
was  theft  many  centuries  before 
Proudhon  was  born.  Bourdaloue 
reaffirmed  it.  Montesquieu  was 
the  inventor  of  national  work- 
shops, and  of  the  theory  that  the 
State  owed  every  man  a  living. 
Nay,  was  not  the  Church  herself 
the  first  organized  Democracy? 
A  few  centuries  ago  the  chief 
end  of  man  was  to  keep  his  soul 
alive,  and  then  the  little  kernel  of 
leaven  that  sets  the  gases  at  work 
was  religious,  and  produced  the 
Reformation.  Even  in  that,  far- 
sighted  persons  like  the  Emperor 
Charles  V.  saw  the  germ  of  polit- 
ical and  social  revolution.    Now 


so       DEMOCRACY 

that  the  chief  end  of  man  seems 
to  have  become  the  keeping  of  the 
body  alive,  and  as  comfortably 
alive  as  possible,  the  leaven  also 
has  become  wholly  political  and 
social.  But  there  had  also  been 
social  upheavals  before  the  Re- 
formation and  contemporaneously 
with  it,  especially  among  men  of 
Teutonic  race.  The  Reformation 
gave  outlet  and  direction  to  an 
unrest  already  existing.  Formerly 
the  immense  majority  of  men  — 
our  brothers  —  knew  only  their 
sufferings,  their  wants,  and  their 
desires.  They  are  beginning  now 
to  know  their  opportunity  and 
their  power.  All  persons  who  see 
deeper  than  their  plates  are  rather 


DEMOCRACY        21 

inclined  to  thank  God  for  it  than 
to  bewail  it,  for  the  sores  of  Laza- 
rus have  a  poison  in  them  against 
which  Dives  has  no  antidote. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
spectacle  of  a  great  and  prosperous 
Democracy  on  the  other  side  of 
the  Atlantic  must  react  powerfully 
on  the  aspirations  and  political  the- 
ories of  men  in  the  Old  World 
who  do  not  find  things  to  their 
mind ;  but,  whether  for  good  or 
evil,  it  should  not  be  overlooked 
that  the  acorn  from  which  it  sprang 
was  ripened  on  the  British  oak. 
Every  successive  swarm  that  has 
gone  out  from  this  officina  gentium 
has,  when  left  to  its  own  instincts 
—  may  I  not  call  them  hereditary 


22        DEMOCRACY 

instincts  ?  —  assumed  a  more  or 
less  thoroughly  democratic  form. 
This  would  seem  to  show,  what  I 
believe  to  be  the  fact,  that  the  Brit- 
ish Constitution,  under  whatever 
disguises  of  prudence  or  decorum, 
is  essentially  democratic.  England, 
indeed,  may  be  called  a  monarchy 
with  democratic  tendencies,  the 
United  States  a  democracy  with 
conservative  instincts.  People  are 
continually  saying  that  America  is 
in  the  air,  and  I  am  glad  to  think 
it  is,  since  this  means  only  that 
a  clearer  conception  of  human 
claims  and  human  duties  is  begin- 
ning to  be  prevalent.  The  dis- 
content with  the  existing  order 
of  things,  however,  pervaded  the 


DEMOCRACY        23 

atmosphere  wherever  the  condi- 
tions were  favorable,  long  before 
Columbus,  seeking  the  back  door 
of  Asia,  found  himself  knocking 
at  the  front  door  of  America.  I 
say  wherever  the  conditions  were 
favorable,  for  it  is  certain  that  the 
germs  of  disease  do  not  stick  or 
find  a  prosperous  field  for  their 
development  and  noxious  activity 
unless  where  the  simplest  sanitary 
precautions  have  been  neglected. 
"  For  this  effect  defective  comes 
by  cause,"  as  Polonius  said  long 
ago.  It  is  only  by  instigation  of 
the  wrongs  of  men  that  what  are 
called  the  Rights  of  Man  become 
turbulent  and  dangerous.  It  is 
then  only  that  they  syllogize  un- 


24       DEMOCRACY 

welcome  truths.  It  is  not  the 
insurrections  of  ignorance  that 
are  dangerous,  but  the  revolts  of 
intelligence :  — 

"  The  wicked  and  the  weak  rebel  in  vain, 
Slaves  by  their  own  compulsion." 

Had  the  governing  classes  in  France 
during  the  last  century  paid  as 
much  heed  to  their  proper  busi- 
ness as  to  their  pleasures  or  man- 
ners, the  guillotine  need  never  have 
severed  that  spinal  marrow  of  or- 
derly and  secular  tradition  through 
which  in  a  normally  constituted 
state  the  brain  sympathizes  with 
the  extremities  and  sends  will 
and  impulsion  thither.  It  is  only 
when  the  reasonable  and  practi- 


DEMOCRACY        25 

cable  are  denied  that  men  demand 
the  unreasonable  and  impractica- 
ble ;  only  when  the  possible  is 
made  difficult  that  they  fancy  the 
impossible  to  be  easy.  Fairy  tales 
are  made  out  of  the  dreams  of  the 
poor.  No;  the  sentiment  which 
lies  at  the  root  of  democracy  is 
nothing  new.  I  am  speaking  al- 
ways of  a  sentiment,  a  spirit,  and 
not  of  a  form  of  government ;  for 
this  was  but  the  outgrowth  of  the 
other  and  not  its  cause.  This  sen- 
timent is  merely  an  expression  of 
the  natural  wish  of  people  to  have 
a  hand,  if  need  be  a  controlling 
hand,  in  the  management  of  their 
own  affairs.  What  is  new  is  that 
they  are  more  and  more  gaining 


26        DEMOCRACY 

that  control,  and  learning  more 
and  more  how  to  be  worthy  of 
it.  What  we  used  to  call  the  tend- 
ency or  drift — what  we  are  being 
taught  to  call  more  wisely  the 
evolution  of  things — has  for  some 
time  been  setting  steadily  in  this 
direction.  There  is  no  good  in 
arguing  with  the  inevitable.  The 
only  argument  available  with  an 
east  wind  is  to  put  on  your  over- 
coat. And  in  this  case,  also,  the 
prudent  will  prepare  themselves 
to  encounter  what  they  cannot 
prevent.  Some  people  advise  us 
to  put  on  the  brakes,  as  if  the 
movement  of  which  we  are  con- 
scious were  that  of  a  railway  train 
running  down  an  incline.    But  a 


DEMOCRACY        27 

metaphor  is  no  argument,  though 
it  be  sometimes  the  gunpowder 
to  drive  one  home  and  imbed  it  in 
the  memory.  Our  disquiet  comes 
of  what  nurses  and  other  experi- 
enced persons  call  growing-pains, 
and  need  not  seriously  alarm  us. 
They  are  what  every  generation 
before  us  —  certainly  every  gen- 
eration since  the  invention  of  print- 
ing— has  gone  through  with  more 
or  less  good  fortune.  To  the  door 
of  every  generation  there  comes 
a  knocking,  and  unless  the  house- 
hold, like  the  Thane  of  Cawdor 
and  his  wife,  have  been  doing 
some  deed  without  a  name,  they 
need  not  shudder.  It  turns  out  at 
worst  to  be  a  poor  relation  who 


28        DEMOCRACY 

wishes  to  come  in  out  of  the  cold. 
The  porter  always  grumbles  and 
is  slow  to  open.  "  Who 's  there, 
in  the  name  of  Beelzebub?"  he 
mutters.  Not  a  change  for  the 
better  in  our  human  housekeeping 
has  ever  taken  place  that  wise  and 
good  men  have  not  opposed  it, 
—  have  not  prophesied  with  the 
alderman  that  the  world  would 
wake  up  to  find  its  throat  cut  in 
consequence  of  it.  The  world, 
on  the  contrary,  wakes  up,  rubs 
its  eyes,  yawns,  stretches  itself, 
and  goes  about  its  business  as  if 
nothing  had  happened.  Suppres- 
sion of  the  slave  trade,  abolition 
of  slavery,  trade  unions,  —  at  all 
of  these  excellent  people   shook 


DEMOCRACY        29 

their  heads  despondingly,  and  mur- 
mured "  Ichabod."  But  the  trade 
unions  are  now  debating  instead  of 
conspiring,  and  we  all  read  their 
discussions  with  comfort  and  hope, 
sure  that  they  are  learning  the 
business  of  citizenship  and  the  dif- 
ficulties of  practical  legislation. 

One  of  the  most  curious  of  these 
frenzies  of  exclusion  was  that 
against  the  emancipation  of  the 
Jews.  All  share  in  the  govern- 
ment of  the  world  was  denied  for 
centuries  to  perhaps  the  ablest, 
certainly  the  most  tenacious,  race 
that  had  ever  lived  in  it — the  race 
to  whom  we  owed  our  religion  and 
the  purest  spiritual  stimulus  and 
consolation  to  be  found  in  all  lit- 


SO       DEMOCRACY 

erature  —  a  race  in  which  ability 
seems  as  natural  and  hereditary  as 
the  curve  of  their  noses,  and  whose 
blood,  furtively  mingling  with  the 
bluest  bloods  in  Europe,  has  quick- 
ened them  with  its  own  indomitable 
impulsion.  We  drove  them  into  a 
corner,  but  they  had  their  revenge, 
as  the  wronged  are  always  sure  to 
have  it  sooner  or  later.  They  made 
their  corner  the  counter  and  bank- 
ing-house of  the  world,  and  thence 
they  rule  it  and  us  with  the  igno- 
bler  sceptre  of  finance.  Your  grand- 
fathers mobbed  Priestley  only  that 
you  might  set  up  his  statue  and 
make  Birmingham  the  headquar- 
ters of  English  Unitarianism.  We 
hear  it  said  sometimes  that  this  is  an 


DEMOCR  AC  Y        31 

age  of  transition,  as  if  that  made 
matters  clearer;  but  can  any  one 
point  us  to  an  age  that  was  not  ?  If 
he  could,  he  would  show  us  an  age 
of  stagnation.  The  question  for  us, 
as  it  has  been  for  all  before  us,  is 
to  make  the  transition  gradual  and 
easy,  to  see  that  our  points  are  right 
so  that  the  train  may  not  come  to 
grief.  For  we  should  remember 
that  nothing  is  more  natural  for 
people  whose  education  has  been 
neglected  than  to  spell  evolution 
with  an  initial  "r."  A  great  man 
struggling  with  the  storms  of  fate 
has  been  called  a  sublime  specta- 
cle ;  but  surely  a  great  man  wres- 
tling with  these  new  forces  that 
have  come  into  the  world,  master- 


32        DEMOCRACY 

ing  them  and  controlling  them  to 
beneficent  ends,  would  be  a  yet 
sublimer.  Here  is  not  a  danger, 
and  if  there  were  it  would  be  only 
a  better  school  of  manhood,  a  no- 
bler scope  for  ambition.  I  have 
hinted  that  what  people  are  afraid 
of  in  democracy  is  less  the  thing  it- 
self than  what  they  conceive  to  be 
its  necessary  adjuncts  and  conse- 
quences. It  is  supposed  to  reduce 
all  mankind  to  a  dead  level  of  me- 
diocrity in  character  and  culture,  to 
vulgarize  men's  conceptions  of  life, 
and  therefore  their  code  of  morals, 
manners,  and  conduct  —  to  en- 
danger the  rights  of  property  and 
possession.  But  I  believe  that  the 
real  gravamen  of  the  charges  lies 


DEMOCRACY        33 

in  the  habit  it  has  of  making  itself 
generally  disagreeable  by  asking 
the  Powers  that  Be  at  the  most  in- 
convenient moment  whether  they 
are  the  powers  that  ought  to  be.  If 
the  powers  that  be  are  in  a  condi- 
tion to  give  a  satisfactory  answer  to 
this  inevitable  question,  they  need 
feel  in  no  way  discomfited  by  it. 

Few  people  take  the  trouble  of 
trying  to  find  out  what  democracy 
really  is.  Yet  this  would  be  a  great 
help,  for  it  is  our  lawless  and  un- 
certain thoughts,  it  is  the  indefinite- 
ness  of  our  impressions,  that  fill 
darkness,  whether  mental  or  physi- 
cal, with  spectres  and  hobgoblins. 
Democracy  is  nothing  more  than  an 
experiment  in  government,  more 


34        DEMOCRACY 

likely  to  succeed  in  a  new  soil,  but 
likely  to  be  tried  in  all  soils,  which 
must  stand  or  fall  on  its  own  merits 
as  others  have  done  before  it.  For 
there  is  no  trick  of  perpetual  motion 
in  politics  any  more  than  in  me- 
chanics. President  Lincoln  defined 
democracy  to  be  "  the  government 
of  the  people  by  the  people  for  the 
people."  This  is  a  sufficiently  com- 
pact statement  of  it  as  a  political  ar- 
rangement. Theodore  Parker  said 
that  "  Democracy  meant  not  « I  'm 
as  good  as  you  are,'  but  'You  're 
as  good  as  I  am.' "  And  this  is  the 
ethical  conception  of  it,  necessary 
as  a  complement  of  the  other;  a  con- 
ception which,  could  it  be  made  act- 
ual and  practical,  would  easily  solve 


DEMOCRACY        35 

all  the  riddles  that  the  old  sphinx 
of  political  and  social  economy  who 
sits  by  the  roadside  has  been  pro- 
posing to  mankind  from  the  be- 
ginning, and  which  mankind  have 
shown  such  a  singular  talent  for 
answering  wrongly.  In  this  sense 
Christ  was  the  first  true  democrat 
that  ever  breathed,  as  the  old  dra- 
matist Dekker  said  he  was  the  first 
true  gentleman.  The  characters 
may  be  easily  doubled,  so  strong 
is  the  likeness  between  them.  A 
beautiful  and  profound  parable  of 
the  Persian  poet  Jellaladeen  tells 
us  that  "  One  knocked  at  the  Be- 
loved's door,  and  a  voice  asked  from 
within  «  Who  is  there  ? '  and  he  an- 
swered 'It  is  I.'    Then  the  voice 


36       DEMOCRACY 

said,  *  This  house  will  not  hold  me 
and  thee ; '  and  the  door  was  not 
opened.  Then  went  the  lover  into 
the  desert  and  fasted  and  prayed 
in  solitude,  and  after  a  year  he  re- 
turned and  knocked  again  at  the 
door ;  and  again  the  voice  asked 
« Who  is  there  ? '  and  he  said  « It  is 
thyself ; '  and  the  door  was  opened 
to  him."  But  that  is  idealism,  you 
will  say,  and  this  is  an  only  too  prac- 
tical world.  I  grant  it;  but  I  am 
one  of  those  who  believe  that  the 
real  will  never  find  an  irremovable 
basis  till  it  rests  on  the  ideal.  It  used 
to  be  thought  that  a  democracy  was 
possible  only  in  a  small  territory, 
and  this  is  doubtless  true  of  a  de- 
mocracy strictly  defined,  for  in  such 


DEMOCRACY        37 

all  the  citizens  decide  directly  upon 
every  question  of  public  concern  in 
a  general  assembly.  An  example 
still  survives  in  the  tiny  Swiss  can- 
ton of  Appenzell.  But  this  imme- 
diate intervention  of  the  people  in 
their  own  affairs  is  not  of  the  es- 
sence of  democracy ;  it  is  not  ne- 
cessary, nor  indeed,  in  most  cases, 
practicable.  Democracies  to  which 
Mr.  Lincoln's  definition  would  fair- 
ly enough  apply  have  existed,  and 
now  exist,  in  which,  though  the  su- 
preme authority  reside  in  the  peo- 
ple, yet  they  can  act  only  indirectly 
on  the  national  policy.  This  gen- 
eration has  seen  a  democracy  with 
an  imperial  figurehead,  and  in  all 
that  have  ever  existed  the  body 


38       DEMOCRACY 

politic  has  never  embraced  all  the 
inhabitants  included  within  its  ter- 
ritory, the  right  to  share  in  the  di- 
rection of  affairs  has  been  confined 
to  citizens,  and  citizenship  has  been 
further  restricted  by  various  lim- 
itations, sometimes  of  property, 
sometimes  of  nativity,  and  always 
of  age  and  sex. 

The  framers  of  the  American* 
Constitution  were  far  from  wishing 
or  intending  to  found  a  democracy 
in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word, 
though,  as  was  inevitable,  every 
expansion  of  the  scheme  of  gov- 
ernment they  elaborated  has  been 
in  a  democratical  direction.  But 
this  has  been  generally  the  slow 
result  of  growth,  and  not  the  sud- 


DEMOCRACY        39 

den  innovation  of  theory  ;  in  fact, 
they  had  a  profound  disbelief  in 
theory,  and  knew  better  than  to 
commit  the  folly  of  breaking  with 
the  past.  They  were  not  seduced 
by  the  French  fallacy  that  a  new 
system  of  government  could  be 
ordered  like  a  new  suit  of  clothes. 
They  would  as  soon  have  thought 
of  ordering  a  new  suit  of  flesh  and 
skin.  It  is  only  on  the  roaring  loom 
of  time  that  the  stuff  is  woven  for 
such  a  vesture  of  their  thought  and 
experience  as  they  were  meditat- 
ing. They  recognized  fully  the 
value  of  tradition  and  habit  as  the 
great  allies  of  permanence  and  sta- 
bility. They  all  had  that  distaste 
for  innovation  which  belonged  to 


40        DEMOCRACY 

their  race,  and  many  of  them  a  dis- 
trust of  human  nature  derived  from 
their  creed.  The  day  of  sentiment 
was  over,  and  no  dithyrambic  af- 
firmations or  fine-drawn  analyses 
of  the  Rights  of  Man  would  serve 
their  present  turn.  This  was  a  prac- 
tical question,  and  they  addressed 
themselves  to  it  as  men  of  know- 
ledge and  judgment  should.  Their 
problem  was  how  to  adapt  English 
principles  and  precedents  to  the  new 
conditions  of  American  life,  and 
they  solved  it  with  singular  dis- 
cretion. They  put  as  many  obsta- 
cles as  they  could  contrive,  not  in 
the  way  of  the  people's  will,  but  of 
their  whim.  With  few  exceptions 
they  probably  admitted  the  logic 
of  the  then  accepted  syllogism,  — 


DEMOCRACY        41 

democracy,  anarchy,  despotism. 
But  this  formula  was  framed  upon 
the  experience  of  small  cities  shut 
up  to  stew  within  their  narrow 
walls,  where  the  number  of  citizens 
made  but  an  inconsiderable  fraction 
of  the  inhabitants,  where  every  pas- 
sion was  reverberated  from  house 
to  house  and  from  man  to  man  with 
gathering  rumor  till  every  impulse 
became  gregarious  and  therefore 
inconsiderate,  and  every  popular 
assembly  needed  but  an  infusion  of 
eloquent  sophistry  to  turn  it  into  a 
mob,  all  the  more  dangerous  be- 
cause sanctified  with  the  formality 
of  law.1 

1  The  effect  of  the  electric  telegraph  in  re- 
producing this  trooping  of  emotion  and  per- 
haps of  opinion  is  yet  to  be  measured.  The 


42        DEMOCRACY 

Fortunately  their  case  was  whol- 
ly different.  They  were  to  legislate 
for  a  widely  scattered  population 
and  for  States  already  practised  in 
the  discipline  of  a  partial  independ- 
ence. They  had  an  unequalled 
opportunity  and  enormous  advan- 
tages. The  material  they  had  to 
work  upon  was  already  democrat- 
ical  by  instinct  and  habitude.  It 
was  tempered  to  their  hands  by 
more  than  a  century's  schooling  in 
self-government.  They  had  but  to 
give  permanent  and  conservative 
form  to  a  ductile  mass.  In  giving 
impulse  and  direction  to  their  new 
institutions,  especially  in  supplying 

effect  of  Darwinism  as  a  disintegrator  of  hu- 
manitarianism  is  also  to  be  reckoned  with. 


DEMOCRACY        43 

them  with  checks  and  balances, 
they  had  a  great  help  and  safe- 
guard in  their  federal  organization. 
The  different,  sometimes  conflict- 
ing, interests  and  social  systems  of 
the  several  States  made  existence 
as  a  Union  and  coalescence  into 
a  nation  conditional  on  a  constant 
practice  of  moderation  and  com- 
promise. The  very  elements  of  dis- 
integration were  the  best  guides  in 
political  training.  Their  children 
learned  the  lesson  of  compromise 
only  too  well,  and  it  was  the  appli- 
cation of  it  to  a  question  of  funda- 
mental morals  that  cost  us  our  civil 
war.  We  learned  once  for  all  that 
compromise  makes  a  good  um- 
brella but  a  poor  roof ;  that  it  is  a 


44       DEMOCRACY 

temporary  expedient,  often  wise  in 
party  politics,  almost  sure  to  be 
unwise  in  statesmanship. 

Has  not  the  trial  of  democracy 
in  America  proved,  on  the  whole, 
successful  ?  If  it  had  not,  would  the 
Old  World  be  vexed  with  any  fears 
of  its  proving  contagious  ?  This  trial 
would  have  been  less  severe  could 
it  have  been  made  with  a  people 
homogeneous  in  race,  language, 
and  traditions,  whereas  the  United 
States  have  been  called  on  to  absorb 
and  assimilate  enormous  masses  of 
foreign  population,  heterogeneous 
in  all  these  respects,  and  drawn 
mainly  from  that  class  which  might 
fairly  say  that  the  world  was  not 
their  friend,  nor  the  world's  law. 


DEMOCRACY        45 

The  previous  condition  too  often 
justified  the  traditional  Irishman, 
who,  landing  in  New  York  and 
asked  what  his  politics  were,  in- 
quired if  there  was  a  Government 
there,  and  on  being  told  that  there 
was,  retorted,  «  Thin  I  'm  agin  it ! " 
We  have  taken  from  Europe  the 
poorest,  the  most  ignorant,  the  most 
turbulent  of  her  people,  and  have 
made  them  over  into  good  citizens, 
who  have  added  to  our  wealth,  and 
who  are  ready  to  die  in  defence  of 
a  country  and  of  institutions  which 
they  know  to  be  worth  dying  for. 
The  exceptions  have  been  (and  they 
are  lamentable  exceptions)  where 
these  hordes  of  ignorance  and  pov- 
erty have  coagulated  in  great  cities. 


46        DEMOCRACY 

But  the  social  system  is  yet  to  seek 
which  has  not  to  look  the  same  ter- 
rible wolf  in  the  eyes.  On  the  other 
hand,  at  this  very  moment  Irish 
peasants  are  buying  up  the  worn- 
out  farms  of  Massachusetts,  and 
making  them  productive  again  by 
the  same  virtues  of  industry  and 
thrift  that  once  made  them  profit- 
able to  the  English  ancestors  of  the 
men  who  are  deserting  them.  To 
have  achieved  even  these  prosaic 
results  ( if  you  choose  to  call  them 
so),  and  that  out  of  materials  the 
most  discordant,  —  I  might  say  the 
most  recalcitrant,  —  argues  a  cer- 
tain beneficent  virtue  in  the  system 
that  could  do  it,  and  is  not  to  be 
accounted  for  by  mere  luck.    Car- 


DEMOCRACY        47 

lyle  said  scornfully  that  America 
meant  only  roast  turkey  every  day 
for  everybody.  He  forgot  that 
States,  as  Bacon  said  of  wars,  go 
on  their  bellies.  As  for  the  secu- 
rity of  property,  it  should  be  tol- 
erably well  secured  in  a  country 
where  every  other  man  hopes  to 
be  rich,  even  though  the  only  pro- 
perty qualification  be  the  owner- 
ship of  two  hands  that  add  to  the 
general  wealth.  Is  it  not  the  best 
security  for  anything  to  interest  the 
largest  possible  number  of  persons 
in  its  preservation  and  the  smallest 
in  its  division  ?  In  point  of  fact,  far- 
seeing  men  count  the  increasing 
power  of  wealth  and  its  combina- 
tions as  one  of  the  chief  dangers 


48        DEMOCRACY 

with  which  the  institutions  of  the 
United  States  are  threatened  in  the 
not  distant  future.    The  right  of 
individual  property  is  no  doubt  the 
very  corner-stone  of  civilization  as 
hitherto  understood,  but  I  am  a 
little  impatient  of  being  told  that 
property  is  entitled  to  exceptional 
consideration  because  it  bears  all  the 
burdens  of  the  State.  It  bears  those, 
indeed,  which  can  most  easily  be 
borne,  but  poverty  pays  with  its 
person  the  chief  expenses  of  war, 
pestilence,    and    famine.    Wealth 
should  not  forget  this,  for  poverty 
is  beginning  to  think  of  it  now  and 
then.    Let  me  not  be  misunder- 
stood. I  see  as  clearly  as  any  man 
possibly  can,  and  rate  as  highly, 


DEMOCRACY        49 

the  value  of  wealth,  and  of  heredi- 
tary wealth,  as  the  security  of  re- 
finement, the  feeder  of  all  those 
arts  that  ennoble  and  beautify  life, 
and  as  making  a  country  worth 
living  in.  Many  an  ancestral  hall 
here  in  England  has  been  a  nursery 
of  that  culture  which  has  been  of 
example  and  benefit  to  all.  Old 
gold  has  a  civilizing  virtue  which 
new  gold  must  grow  old  to  be  capa- 
ble of  secreting. 

I  should  not  think  of  coming  be- 
fore you  to  defend  or  to  criticise 
any  form  of  government.  All  have 
their  virtues,  all  their  defects,  and 
all  have  illustrated  one  period  or 
another  in  the  history  of  the  race, 
with  signal  services  to  humanity 


50       DEMOCRACY 

and  culture.  There  is  not  one  that 
could  stand  a  cynical  cross-exami- 
nation by  an  experienced  criminal 
lawyer,  except  that  of  a  perfectly 
wise  and  perfectly  good  despot, 
such  as  the  world  has  never  seen, 
except  in  that  white-haired  king  of 
Browning's,  who 

"  Lived  long  ago 
In  the  morning  of  the  world, 
When  Earth  was  nearer  Heaven  than  now." 

The  English  race,  if  they  did  not 
invent  government  by  discussion, 
have  at  least  carried  it  nearest  to 
perfection  in  practice.  It  seems  a 
very  safe  and  reasonable  contriv- 
ance for  occupying  the  attention 
of  the  country,  and  is  certainly  a 
better  way  of  settling  questions 


DEMOCRACY        51 

than  by  push  of  pike.  Yet,  if  one 
should  ask  it  why  it  should  not 
rather  be  called  government  by 
gabble,  it  would  have  to  fumble  in 
its  pocket  a  good  while  before  it 
found  the  change  for  a  convincing 
reply.  As  matters  stand,  too,  it  is 
beginning  to  be  doubtful  whether 
Parliament  and  Congress  sit  at 
Westminster  and  Washington  or 
in  the  editors'  rooms  of  the  leading 
journals,  so  thoroughly  is  every- 
thing debated  before  the  author- 
ized and  responsible  debaters  get 
on  their  legs.  And  what  shall  we 
say  of  government  by  a  major- 
ity of  voices  ?  To  a  person  who  in 
the  last  century  would  have  called 
himself  an  Impartial  Observer,  a 


52        DEMOCRACY 

numerical  preponderance  seems, 
on  the  whole,  as  clumsy  a  way  of 
arriving  at  truth  as  could  well  be 
devised,  but  experience  has  appar- 
ently shown  it  to  be  a  convenient 
arrangement  for  determining  what 
may  be  expedient  or  advisable  or 
practicable  at  any  given  moment. 
Truth,  after  all,  wears  a  different 
face  to  everybody,  and  it  would  be 
too  tedious  to  wait  till  all  were 
agreed.  She  is  said  to  lie  at  the  bot- 
tom of  a  well,  for  the  very  reason, 
perhaps,  that  whoever  looks  down 
in  search  of  her  sees  his  own  im- 
age at  the  bottom,  and  is  persuaded 
not  only  that  he  has  seen  the  god- 
dess, but  that  she  is  far  better-look- 
ing than  he  had  imagined. 


DEMOCRACY        53 

The  arguments  against  universal 
suffrage  are  equally  unanswera- 
ble. "  What,"  we  exclaim,  "  shall 
Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry  have  as 
much  weight  in  the  scale  as  I?" 
Of  course,  nothing  could  be  more 
absurd.  And  yet  universal  suf- 
frage has  not  been  the  instrument 
of  greater  unwisdom  than  contriv- 
ances of  a  more  select  description. 
Assemblies  could  be  mentioned 
composed  entirely  of  Masters  of 
Arts  and  Doctors  in  Divinity  which 
have  sometimes  shown  traces  of 
human  passion  or  prejudice  in  their 
votes.  Have  the  Serene  Highnesses 
and  Enlightened  Classes  carried  on 
the  business  of  Mankind  so  well, 
then,  that  there  is  no  use  in  trying 


54        DEMOCRACY 

a  less  costly  method  ?  The  demo- 
cratic theory  is  that  those  Consti- 
tutions are  likely  to  prove  steadiest 
which  have  the  broadest  base,  that 
the  right  to  vote  makes  a  safety- 
valve  of  every  voter,  and  that  the 
best  way  of  teaching  a  man  how 
to  vote  is  to  give  him  the  chance 
of  practice.  For  the  question  is  no 
longer  the  academic  one,  "  Is  -it 
wise  to  give  every  man  the  ballot? " 
but  rather  the  practical  one,  "  Is  it 
prudent  to  deprive  whole  classes 
of  it  any  longer  ? "  It  may  be  con- 
jectured that  it  is  cheaper  in  the 
long  run  to  lift  men  up  than  to 
hold  them  down,  and  that  the  bal- 
lot in  their  hands  is  less  dangerous 
to  society  than  a  sense  of  wrong  in 


DEMOCRACY        55 

their  heads.  At  any  rate  this  is  the 
dilemma  to  which  the  drift  of  opin- 
ion has  been  for  some  time  sweep- 
ing us,  and  in  politics  a  dilemma  is 
a  more  unmanageable  thing  to  hold 
by  the  horns  than  a  wolf  by  the 
ears.  It  is  said  that  the  right  of 
suffrage  is  not  valued  when  it  is  in- 
discriminately bestowed,  and  there 
may  be  some  truth  in  this,  for  I 
have  observed  that  what  men  prize 
most  is  a  privilege,  even  if  it  be 
that  of  chief  mourner  at  a  funeral. 
But  is  there  not  danger  that  it  will 
be  valued  at  more  than  its  worth  if 
denied,  and  that  some  illegitimate 
way  will  be  sought  to  make  up  for 
the  want  of  it  ?  Men  who  have  a 
voice  in  public  affairs  are  at  once 


56       DEMOCRACY 

affiliated  with  one  or  other  of  the 
great  parties  between  which  society 
is  divided,  merge  their  individual 
hopes  and  opinions  in  its  safer,  be- 
cause more  generalized,  hopes  and 
opinions,  are  disciplined  by  its  tac- 
tics, and  acquire,  to  a  certain  de- 
gree, the  orderly  qualities  of  an 
army.  They  no  longer  belong  to  a 
class,  but  to  a  body  corporate.  Of 
one  thing,  at  least,  we  may  be  cer- 
tain, that,  under  whatever  method 
of  helping  things  to  go  wrong 
man's  wit  can  contrive,  those  who 
have  the  divine  right  to  govern  will 
be  found  to  govern  in  the  end,  and 
that  the  highest  privilege  to  which 
the  majority  of  mankind  can  aspire 
is  that  of  being  governed  by  those 


DEMOCRACY        57 

wiser  than  they.  Universal  suffrage 
has  in  the  United  States  sometimes 
been  made  the  instrument  of  in- 
considerate changes,  under  the  no- 
tion of  reform,  and  this  from  a 
misconception  of  the  true  mean- 
ing of  popular  government.  One 
of  these  has  been  the  substitution 
in  many  of  the  States  of  popular 
election  for  official  selection  in  the 
choice  of  judges.  The  same  sys- 
tem applied  to  military  officers  was 
the  source  of  much  evil  during  our 
civil  war,  and,  I  believe,  had  to  be 
abandoned .  But  it  has  been  also  true 
that  on  all  great  questions  of  na- 
tional policy  a  reserve  of  prudence 
and  discretion  has  been  brought 
out  at  the  critical  moment  to  turn 


58        DEMOCRACY 

the  scale  in  favor  of  a  wiser  de- 
cision. An  appeal  to  the  reason  of 
the  people  has  never  been  known 
to  fail  in  the  long  run.  It  is,  per- 
haps, true  that,  by  effacing  the 
principle  of  passive  obedience,  de- 
mocracy, ill  understood,  has  slack- 
ened the  spring  of  that  ductility  to 
discipline  which  is  essential  to  "  the 
unity  and  married  calm  of  States." 
But  I  feel  assured  that  experience 
and  necessity  will  cure  this  evil,  as 
they  have  shown  their  power  to 
cure  others.  And  under  what  frame 
of  policy  have  evils  ever  been  re- 
medied till  they  became  intolera- 
ble, and  shook  men  out  of  their 
indolent  indifference  through  their 
fears  ? 


DEMOCRACY        59 

We  are  told  that  the  inevitable 
result  of  democracy  is  to  sap  the 
foundations  of  personal  independ- 
ence, to  weaken  the  principle  of 
authority,  to  lessen  the  respect  due 
to  eminence,  whether  in  station, 
virtue,  or  genius.  If  these  things 
were  so,  society  could  not  hold  to- 
gether. Perhaps  the  best  forcing- 
house  of  robust  individuality  would 
be  where  public  opinion  is  inclined 
to  be  most  overbearing,  as  he  must 
be  of  heroic  temper  who  should 
walk  along  Piccadilly  at  the  height 
of  the  season  in  a  soft  hat.  As  for  au- 
thority, it  is  one  of  the  symptoms  of 
the  time  that  the  religious  reverence 
for  it  is  declining  everywhere,  but 
this  is  due  partly  to  the  fact  that 


60        DEMOCRACY 

state-craft  is  no  longer  looked  upon 
as  a  mystery,  but  as  a  business,  and 
partly  to  the  decay  of  superstition, 
by  which  I  mean  the  habit  of  re- 
specting what  we  are  told  to  respect 
rather  than  what  is  respectable  in  it- 
self. There  is  more  rough  and  tum- 
ble in  the  American  democracy  than 
is  altogether  agreeable  to  people  of 
sensitive  nerves  and  refined  habits, 
and  the  people  take  their  political 
duties  lightly  and  laughingly,  as  is, 
perhaps,  neither  unnatural  nor  un- 
becoming in  a  young  giant.  De- 
mocracies can  no  more  jump  away 
from  their  own  shadows  than  the 
rest  of  us  can.  They  no  doubt 
sometimes  make  mistakes  and  pay 
honor  to  men  who  do  not  deserve 


DEMOCRACY        61 

it.  But  they  do  this  because  they 
believe  them  worthy  of  it,  and 
though  it  be  true  that  the  idol  is  the 
measure  of  the  worshipper,  yet  the 
worship  has  in  it  the  germ  of  a  no- 
bler religion.  But  is  it  democracies 
alone  that  fall  into  these  errors  ?  I, 
who  have  seen  it  proposed  to  erect 
a  statue  to  Hudson,  the  railway 
king,  and  have  heard  Louis  Napo- 
leon hailed  as  the  saviour  of  society 
by  men  who  certainly  had  no  de- 
mocratic associations  or  leanings, 
am  not  ready  to  think  so.  But  de- 
mocracies have  likewise  their  finer 
instincts.  I  have  also  seen  the 
wisest  statesman  and  most  preg- 
nant speaker  of  our  generation,  a 
man  of  humble  birth  and  ungainly 


62       DEMOCRACY 

manners,  of  little  culture  beyond 
what  his  own  genius  supplied,  be- 
come more  absolute  in  power  than 
any  monarch  of  modern  times 
through  the  reverence  of  his  coun- 
trymen for  his  honesty,  his  wis- 
dom, his  sincerity,  his  faith  in  God 
and  man,  and  the  nobly  humane 
simplicity  of  his  character.  And  I 
remember  another  whom  popular 
respect  enveloped  as  with  a  halo, 
the  least  vulgar  of  men,  the  most 
austerely  genial,  and  the  most  inde- 
pendent of  opinion.  Wherever  he 
went  he  never  met  a  stranger,  but 
everywhere  neighbors  and  friends 
proud  of  him  as  their  ornament 
and  decoration.  Institutions  which 
could  bear  and  breed  such  men  as 


DEMOCRACY        63 

Lincoln  and  Emerson  had  surely 
some  energy  for  good.  No,  amid 
all  the  fruitless  turmoil  and  mis- 
carriage of  the  world,  if  there  be 
one  thing  steadfast  and  of  favorable 
omen,  one  thing  to  make  optimism 
distrust  its  own  obscure  distrust, 
it  is  the  rooted  instinct  in  men  to 
admire  what  is  better  and  more 
beautiful  than  themselves.  The 
touchstone  of  political  and  social 
institutions  is  their  ability  to  supply 
them  with  worthy  objects  of  this 
sentiment,  which  is  the  very  tap- 
root of  civilization  and  progress. 
There  would  seem  to  be  no  readier 
way  of  feeding  it  with  the  elements 
of  growth  and  vigor  than  such 
an  organization  of  society  as  will 


64        DEMOCRACY 

enable  men  to  respect  themselves, 
and  so  to  justify  them  in  respect- 
ing others. 

Such  a  result  is  quite  possible 
under  other  conditions  than  those 
of  an  avowedly  democratical  Con- 
stitution. For  I  take  it  that  the  real 
essence  of  democracy  was  fairly 
enough  defined  by  the  First  Napo- 
leon when  he  said  that  the  French 
Revolution  meant  "  la  carriere  ou- 
verte  aux  talents  "  —  a  clear  path- 
way for  merit  of  whatever  kind. 
I  should  be  inclined  to  paraphrase 
this  by  calling  democracy  that  form 
of  society,  no  matter  what  its  poli- 
tical classification,  in  which  every 
man  had  a  chance  and  knew  that 
he  had  it.    If  a  man  can  climb,  and 


DEMOCRACY        65 

feels  himself  encouraged  to  climb, 
from  a  coalpit  to  the  highest  posi- 
tion for  which  he  is  fitted,  he  can 
well  afford  to  be  indifferent  what 
name  is  given  to  the  government 
under  which  he  lives.  The  Bailli 
of  Mirabeau,  uncle  of  the  more  fa- 
mous tribune  of  that  name,  wrote 
in  1771 :  "  The  English  are,  in  my 
opinion,  a  hundred  times  more  agi- 
tated and  more  unfortunate  than 
the  very  Algerines  themselves,  be- 
cause they  do  not  know  and  will  not 
know  till  the  destruction  of  their 
overswollen  power,  which  I  believe 
very  near,  whether  they  are  mon- 
archy, aristocracy,  or  democracy, 
and  wish  to  play  the  part  of  all 
three."  England  has  not  been  obli- 


66       DEMOCRACY 

ging  enough  to  fulfil  the  Bailli's 
prophecy,  and  perhaps  it  was  this 
very  carelessness  about  the  name, 
and  concern  about  the  substance  of 
popular  government,  this  skill  in 
getting  the  best  out  of  things  as 
they  are,  in  utilizing  all  the  motives 
which  influence  men,  and  in  giving 
one  direction  to  many  impulses, 
that  has  been  a  principal  factor  of 
her  greatness  and  power.  Perhaps 
it  is  fortunate  to  have  an  unwritten 
Constitution,  for  men  are  prone  to 
be  tinkering  the  work  of  their  own 
hands,  whereas  they  are  more  will- 
ing to  let  time  and  circumstance 
mend  or  modify  what  time  and 
circumstance  have  made.  All  free 
governments,  whatever  their  name, 


DEMOCRACY        67 

are  in  reality  governments  by  pub- 
lic opinion,  and  it  is  on  the  quality 
of  this  public  opinion  that  their  pro- 
sperity depends.  It  is,  therefore, 
their  first  duty  to  purify  the  ele- 
ment from  which  they  draw  the 
breath  of  life.  With  the  growth  of 
democracy  grows  also  the  fear,  if 
not  the  danger,  that  this  atmosphere 
may  be  corrupted  with  poisonous 
exhalations  from  lower  and  more 
malarious  levels,  and  the  question 
of  sanitation  becomes  more  instant 
and  pressing.  Democracy  in  its 
best  sense  is  merely  the  letting  in 
of  light  and  air.  Lord  Sherbrooke, 
with  his  usual  epigrammatic  terse- 
ness, bids  you  educate  your  future 
rulers.    But  would  this  alone  be  a 


68       DEMOCRACY 

sufficient  safeguard  ?  To  educate 
the  intelligence  is  to  enlarge  the 
horizon  of  its  desires  and  wants. 
And  it  is  well  that  this  should  be 
so.  But  the  enterprise  must  go 
deeper  and  prepare  the  way  for 
satisfying  those  desires  and  wants 
in  so  far  as  they  are  legitimate. 
What  is  really  ominous  of  danger 
to  the  existing  order  of  things  is 
not  democracy  (which,  properly 
understood,  is  a  conservative 
force),  but  the  Socialism  which 
may  find  a  fulcrum  in  it.  If  we 
cannot  equalize  conditions  and  for- 
tunes any  more  than  we  can  equal- 
ize the  brains  of  men  —  and  a 
very  sagacious  person  has  said  that 
"  where  two  men  ride  of  a  horse 


DEMOCRACY        69 

one  must  ride  behind"  —  we  can 
yet,  perhaps,  do  something  to  cor- 
rect those  methods  and  influences 
that  lead  to  enormous  inequalities, 
and  to  prevent  their  growing  more 
enormous.  It  is  all  very  well  to 
pooh-pooh  Mr.  George  and  to 
prove  him  mistaken  in  his  political 
economy.  I  do  not  believe  that 
land  should  be  divided  because  the 
quantity  of  it  is  limited  by  nature. 
Of  what  may  this  not  be  said  ?  A 
fortiori,  we  might  on  the  same 
principle  insist  on  a  division  of  hu- 
man wit,  for  I  have  observed  that 
the  quantity  of  this  has  been  even 
more  inconveniently  limited.  Mr. 
George  himself  has  an  inequitably 
large  share  of  it.    But  he  is  right  in 


70        DEMOCRACY 

his  impelling  motive ;  right,  also,  I 
am  convinced,  in  insisting  that  hu- 
manity makes  a  part,  by  far  the 
most  important  part,  of  political 
economy ;  and  in  thinking  man  to 
be  of  more  concern  and  more  con- 
vincing than  the  longest  columns 
of  figures  in  the  world.  For  unless 
you  include  human  nature  in  your 
addition,  your  total  is  sure  to  be 
wrong  and  your  deductions  from 
it  fallacious.  Communism  means 
barbarism,  but  Socialism  means, 
or  wishes  to  mean,  cooperation 
and  community  of  interests,  sym- 
pathy, the  giving  to  the  hands  not 
so  large  a  share  as  to  the  brains, 
but  a  larger  share  than  hitherto 
in  the  wealth  they  must  combine 


DEMOCRACY        71 

to  produce  —  means,  in  short,  the 
practical  application  of  Christian- 
ity to  life,  and  has  in  it  the  secret  of 
an  orderly  and  benign  reconstruc- 
tion. State  Socialism  would  cut  off 
the  very  roots  in  personal  charac- 
ter —  self-help,  fore  thought,  and 
frugality — which  nourish  and  sus- 
tain the  trunk  and  branches  of 
every  vigorous  Commonwealth. 

I  do  not  believe  in  violent 
changes,  nor  do  I  expect  them. 
Things  in  possession  have  a  very 
firm  grip.  One  of  the  strongest 
cements  of  society  is  the  conviction 
of  mankind  that  the  state  of  things 
into  which  they  are  born  is  a  part 
of  the  order  of  the  universe,  as 
natural,  let  us  say,  as  that  the  sun 


72        DEMOCRACY 

should  go  round  the  earth.  It  is  a 
conviction  that  they  will  not  sur- 
render except  on  compulsion,  and 
a  wise  society  should  look  to  it  that 
this  compulsion  be  not  put  upon 
them.  For  the  individual  man  there 
is  no  radical  cure,  outside  of  human 
nature  itself,  for  the  evils  to  which 
human  nature  is  heir.  The  rule 
will  always  hold  good  that  you 
must 

"  Be  your  own  palace  or  the  world 's  your 
gaol." 

But  for  artificial  evils,  for  evils 
that  spring  from  want  of  thought, 
thought  must  find  a  remedy  some- 
where. There  has  been  no  period 
of  time  in  which  wealth  has  been 
more  sensible  of  its  duties  than 


DEMOCRACY        73 

now.  It  builds  hospitals,  it  estab- 
lishes missions  among  the  poor,  it 
endows  schools.  It  is  one  of  the 
advantages  of  accumulated  wealth, 
and  of  the  leisure  it  renders  possi- 
ble, that  people  have  time  to  think 
of  the  wants  and  sorrows  of  their 
fellows.  But  all  these  remedies  are 
partial  and  palliative  merely.  It  is 
as  if  we  should  apply  plasters  to  a 
single  pustule  of  the  small-pox  with 
a  view  of  driving  out  the  disease. 
The  true  way  is  to  discover  and  to 
extirpate  the  germs.  As  society  is 
now  constituted  these  are  in  the  air 
it  breathes,  in  the  water  it  drinks,  in 
things  that  seem,  and  which  it  has 
always  believed,  to  be  the  most  in- 
nocent and  healthful.  The  evil  ele- 


74       DEMOCRACY 

ments  it  neglects  corrupt  these  in 
their  springs  and  pollute  them  in 
their  courses.  Let  us  be  of  good 
cheer,  however,  remembering  that 
the  misfortunes  hardest  to  bear 
are  those  which  never  come.  The 
world  has  outlived  much,  and  will 
outlive  a  great  deal  more,  and  men 
have  contrived  to  be  happy  in  it.  It 
has  shown  the  strength  of  its  con- 
stitution in  nothing  more  than  in 
surviving  the  quack  medicines  it 
has  tried.  In  the  scales  of  the  des- 
tinies brawn  will  never  weigh  so 
much  as  brain.  Our  healing  is  not 
in  the  storm  or  in  the  whirlwind,  it 
is  not  in  monarchies,  or  aristocra- 
cies, or  democracies,  but  will  be  re- 
vealed by  the  still  small  voice  that 


DEMOCRACY 


75 


speaks  to  the  conscience  and  the 
heart,  prompting  us  to  a  wider  and 
wiser  humanity. 


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